March 28, 2005

worldKit 2.0!

A major rewrite, several new features moved from beta, and poised for more developments ... worldKit 2.0 is released!

2.0? Yes, straight from no versioning to 2.0. Last January's release would have been 1.0, if versioning had existed then :). The code behind worldKit has undergone a complete reconstruction, cleanly designed in object oriented actionscript. Of course, that will hopefully remain transparent to worldKit authors and users! It will lead to quicker feature development in the future, and enable worldKit to function as a Component for Flash developers.

From this release on, pressing "v" will reveal the which version of worldKit is running.

Polygons and lines Two new geo elements are introduced, <geo:polygon> and <geo:line>, which enable great expressiveness and power in map annotations. The front page sample map demonstrates use of geo:polygon. Documentation details how to do it.

Time Navigation worldKit is beginning to support the experimental idea of time navigation in GIS. There is great potential here for new sorts of interactions with and understanding of information. History of Urbanization demonstrates how this works. Documentation on the details.

Javascript API Changes Communication from worldKit to javascript has changed, for compatibility in more browsers. It's also a bit simpler to work with .. but unfortunately not compatible with the previous method. This shouldn't affect too many installs out there, but be aware.

There is also a new javascript to worldKit communication variable, "JRSSComm". Set the value to a string containing geocoded RSS. This can be handy in Ajax style applications, as seen in the geocoder.

New for Tracks Tracks are now categorizable, so that annotations can be connected by category. The config option <linecolor> enables control of the color of track logs (and also geo:line and geo:polygon borders).

Problems This release has gone through extensive testing, but with such core changes there are bound to be a bug or two slipping through. If you notice any problems, inconsistencies, etc., I'd be grateful to hear from you.

Download and dig in Make some cool stuff, useful stuff, make some maps!
Posted by Mikel at March 28, 2005 12:56 PM